By agreeing to a four-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the International Betting Integrity Association (IBIA), the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has demonstrated its commitment to preserving football’s integrity throughout Asia.
This agreement, which was made public today, October 7, 2024, intends to bolster continental efforts to combat match-fixing and other illicit betting practices.
The MoU calls for tight cooperation between the AFC and IBIA to identify questionable betting trends during football games.
IBIA will make use of its Monitoring and Alert Platform to give the AFC up-to-date information on anomalous betting activity, which will improve the AFC’s capacity to look into any match tampering as soon as possible.
Andrew Mercer, General Counsel and Director of Legal Affairs for the AFC, stressed the organization’s dedication to upholding moral standards in sports.
Mercer went on to say that collaborations with elite groups are essential in the war against match-fixing. “Our ability to guarantee that football in Asia remains clean for the next generations of fans, players, and stakeholders is further strengthened by this Memorandum of Understanding with IBIA.”
IBIA CEO Khalid Ali expressed excitement over the partnership and emphasized that it is “essential for an effective integrity monitoring and investigatory framework.”
With this significant information-sharing partnership, IBIA is happy to deepen its engagement with the AFC. By keeping an eye on our members’ worldwide customer account activity—which includes more than $300 billion in sports betting each year—we will protect the AFC ecosystem, Ali continued.
According to ResearchAndMarkets.com, the size of the sports betting industry in Asia Pacific is expected to reach $60.3 billion by 2030.
